Zoopla has bought Thinkproperty.com from the Guardian Media Group. In a sign of the teams you could read about this consolidation in the UK property portal market in the Zoopla blog.

Zoopla don’t just get a great brand. They’ve managed to secure themselves as the exclusive search partner for the Guardian.co.uk.

We agree with the wise words of Property Owl who hoot that there are still too many portals and that Zoopla now face the challenge of the integration. In particular Property Owl’s suggestion that an industry wide standard on property feeds would is an interesting idea and worth looking at.

What does all this mean to you?

It means that there are still loads of places for you to discover houses for sale. The fact there is need for consolidation suggests that the current levels of competition are just not sustainable so we might see some reduction in choice and incentives over the next few months but savvy ‘zilla house hunters will still be checking online for years to come.

Related personalfinanosaurus posts:

1. It pays to query your credit card APR
2. New Year, same housing situation?
3. Choosing a different kind of security

Following a disagreement with my local bank which resulted in my biting the head off the manager and then rampaging through downtown Tokyo pursued by a troop of badly dubbed and poorly acted Japanese scientists and soldiers, I decided I wanted to rant and find out what the current view of the various banks was from the customers point of view. To this end I revisited a site I found some time ago, and thought it might be worthwhile pointing you to it, in case any of you, like myself, already know the interest rates and charges being offered by the banks but also want to know which ones are providing good or bad customer service. Basically, you want to get past the figures and find out what do their customers really feel about them.

Reviewcentre covers a huge range of products, and I do recommend checking them out just to find out other peoples experiences, as well as checking out the facts and figures which other sites provide.

Related personalfinanosaurus posts:

1. UK Interest rates go down, down, deeper and down
2. Warning – credit cards can damage your wealth
3. Tories want bank charges compensation repaid ‘quickly and fairly’

Yahoo and MSN have been offering similar services for some time. All the more similar due to at least one key ex-Yahoo! Finance member of staff, Katie Stanton, being involved with the new Google project.

Building on the existing Google News and Google Blog Search, this Google service allows you to get back news and blog search results related to companies listed in the finance area, although this is currently only covering companies in North America, however Google has said that it plans to expand “very quickly” to other countries and regions of the world in the future, although there’s no rollout timetable planned yet.

Many commentators feel a little let down by the new offering, as it does not appear to present much of an extension over the sevices offered by its more established competitors, with the possible exception of the Stock Charts With News Events and Interactive Stock Chart Timetables functions, however, there are already plans to release targeted discussion groups for various companies, based on the existing Google Groups service, and there is a large amount of scope for future integration with Googles other services.

Although the initial release may not be the all encompassing service that many were looking for, if there is one thing that Google does not lack at present, it is vision. Expect this service to get some major developments as the roll outs increase.

And finally a quick message from the big one with scales

Related personalfinanosaurus posts:

1. Pay as you go car finance
2. Maestro not good enough for Google Checkout
3. Hello to the scary world of finance – mission statement

Well, I have just been looking at the good old Motley Fool website, and noticed a link to a really useful moneysaving site – Petrolprices.com. There has been little help in determining the cheapest petrol prices in your local area since the closure of the AA Petrolbusters site last year, however this new site allows you to do just that. All you need to do is type in your postcode, and it will search for the cheapest unleaded, diesel, LRP, super and LPG in the area.

Although it cannot get rid of the extortionate rate of tax that accounts for about 70% of the actual amount you have to pay at the pump, at least you can help to reduce your contributions to Mr Browns coffers, and keep the money for yourself.

And if you are a two ton, one million year old money obsessed dinosaur, please get in touch, there aren’t many of us around, we need to stick together.

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